After rain, house exteriors on Van Horn Street, Hamilton County, Ohio: photo by Carl Mydans, December 1935

Front of old brick structure in section near Union Station, Washington, D.C.; land is low here and water collects in front and backyard after a rain and remains for many days; entrances to privies are usually under water; interior of homes similar in shabbiness to exterior: photo by Carl Mydans, September 1935

Yes I am knowing all about Rain.This Rain you talk about. She is a frequent visitor to my part of the world.But without the Rain (even heavy)sometimes the Sun on his own cannot make a Rainbow; right?I found by gazing at these pictures of her torments and then reading the words, brought her closer in towards my feelings.I am loving 'the very large in the very small again' Those last words, those few words say so much; even about the Rain within oneself.I am thinking, I am liking this muchly; you.

My word verification is 'ouchy' Ha! Did my comment make sense? If not delete!

Oh my, what a flood of gratitude in one's heart for one's friends, at a time like this.

This post is probably a bit of crazy black magic, it was made in the wake of a nasty accident that happened in the midst of the spectacular storms we have been having.

Not that I have anything against rain, one of Mother Nature's blessings. But is this rain coming from Mother Nature, or from Mother Man?

Stephen is close enough to "the edge" to capture both the closer and the bigger picture:

"...not the big one they were promising (yet) but it's still going on, who knows how long -- global warming (?). . . ."

We've been having crashing weather, in short.

On Friday night, in a teeming rain, crossing a parking lot, I failed to see a set of vehicle-repellent spikes, tripped, the pavement came up hard and fast, and I ended up breaking a rib and cracking a tibia. ("This must be the end," he thought, struggling to stay conscious.)

that is moving toward which,itself is as observer

as he had been before,ouchy

SarahA, your word verification, like you, is an oracle, and your lovely words are always the bearers of the very large in the vast and wonderfully small,

Robb, your word verifications always remind me how much I love you, and I wish I could tell you the easy way to find these pictures. They're all in the LOC, the Farm Security Administration archive, the files contain 244,000 black and white negatives, some 166,000 of these have been digitized, it is a wealth of heroic endeavour, reminding one that there once was an America that almost lived up to its promises, the archival channels are a clogged labyrinth of problem, but with a bit of patience one can find one's way (took me about eighteen months... and still learning...),

And Curtis, as always, thanks for getting it. (My collaborators thank you too.)

All those WPA photos of rainy streets with black cars and no hope and no prospects--it's all so nostalgic!

You seem to be caught in a very nostalgic loop these days. They say as we move into old age, we think more about the past, especially the days of our childhood and youth.

I share your interest in these old documentary images.

It's like a false positive: I didn't live through those times, but they were the reality of my (our) parents' lives, and I think we may actually experience some kind of "unconscious" memory of them, like Jung (I think) believed.

Of course I can't have spent all that time in these archives without asking myself the "nostalgia loop" question, more than once.

The idealizing or mythologizing of a past that may or may not have existed is a regressive symptom, but the odd thing about photographs like these is that, while we are aware there is a political directive behind the survey, the views themselves have an objective quality that remains unquestionable. Seeing the surfaces and forms of a lost world, I think that persons of our age do indeed, as you suggest, reconstruct that lost world out of fleeting memories we may have had, or think we have had.. at any rate I certainly do this.

For instance, in posting the John Vachon set on Dubuque, I was conscious all along of a "hidden motive," that is, a wish to reconstruct or retrieve from my own past a number of trips into that specific part of the country made with my father and grandafther in the late 1940s.

So in some sense there is a kind of a "verification process" at work, for me.

And what I am able to dredge up of that past, from these remarkable photos, is an America that has certain surprisingly tangible qualities.

And when I compare that America with the America I see around me/us, I am afraid I become subject to that sort of historical melancholy for which nostalgia has earned itself a bad name over the years.

(But I am still trying to work this out, and will never finish... so these are just thoughts-in-progress or -regress, I guess.)

That must have been incredibly painful and depressing, Tom -- the image is maybe a bit film noir-y, if you don't mind my saying so. I've broken a lot of bones, I remember what a funny feeling it is not being able to move all of a sudden. I'm very sorry. I hope you're feeling somewhat better, warm and more cozy, by now.

Thanks for the useful local knowledge. Something told me that photo would light up the memory pinball for you.

(Interesting point, by the by, as to whether that is the back of the house or the front; you may well be right -- but as Carl Mydans was there, and wrote that caption card himself, and always took unusual pains to get the details right in his captions, I'm inclined to just live with his mistake, if that is indeed what it is, for surely greater mistakes have been made... and we shall abide. At least for the moment, at any rate.)

Thanks very much. Angelica made the same point about the cows. They are clearly untroubled.

No self-respecting cow, furthermore, would ever trip over an anti-vehicle spike no matter how blinding the rain -- and in the unlikely event it did so, its bones would probably be a bit better padded than mine. (At a brittle ten-stone-and-wasting, the padding is currently in short supply.)

And yes, film noir-y was the scene, though there was no femme fatale lurking in the mist and shadows (more's the pity).

About the broken bones, one ought to be manly and stoic, I suppose, but as you have offered sympathy, I am inclined to lap it up and return with a larger spoon for a second helping (recalling however that it was just such a request that got Nicholas Nickleby, I believe it was, if not more than one of those poor Dickens workhouse lads, into trouble).

I had forgotten about broken bones, though I have had far too many of them. At this point the rib fracture is the worst, as the leg at least can be rested. But with the rib, there comes the lung, and the excruciating and exquisite pain accompanying breathing, coughing (worse), sneezing (unspeakable), and in fact any expression or movement of the upper torso... well, you get the picture.

I am a terrible convalescent at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

However I managed to maneuver the ancient bent frame out into the weather in the the middle of the night just long enough to permit an illuminating glimpse of this.

A once in a lifetime event quite literally, even if one expects an extended lifetime (the last winter-solstice total eclipse, as I'm sure everybody is aware, occurred in the 17th century).